Where do stories like this usually start?

I mean the best you can hope for is the chance to even tell your story and for someone to care. And to get your story right. Because in the end that may be all that matters. It's the last thing people will remember, possibly. Unless you ran over their cat or something. But I do ramble on so..........

I'm sure somewhere along the way I got completely disgusted with music. It was the 80s afterall and music sucked ass at best. I mean think about it, I was a kid growing up on radio and I hated it. Hated it. Bands on Mtv were a joke, all that sorry ass metal hair band 80s bullshit was just that, bullshit. I never wanna relive that time again. I was completely happy when it ended. So, you can assume I was frustrated. Hell, I'm still frustrated but at least now I can put on my own CD and hate my own music. Up until '94 I was listening to "gangsta rap" the most dangerous of dangerous raps. West Coast shit mainly. I still listen to some of it today, it's just so damn good and gritty. That's what radio always lacked to me, passion. Even if it was passion to drink forties, shmoke bud and slap a few choice hos around. At least it was angry and talked about real shit. Then I heard punk in 1994 and that ruined my life. Or saved it. I had to play guitar from that moment on. My first guitar and amp cost less than 200$. I still have the guitar today. I got that guitar in July '95 and pretty much learned myself. Thankfully I had a couple of friends who helped me out in the beginning. They taught me how to play a decent power chord.

I think I began writing as soon as I could put 3 chords together. I mean in less that 8 months I was already playing in my 8th grade talent show. and a couple of months later I played on cable access for a telethon. All the while Nick C. was my main drummer. And Dave K. who's gonna hate me for not putting his last name, would occasionally play bass. He did for the talent show at least. Until they cut us off in the middle of our song. I wrote that song which shall remain nameless, though all these years later I've completely forgotten it. So somewhere around '96 I got my first job, which was performing in a resturaunt. I hope I spelled that right, I hate that word. So I must have played there for almost 3 years or something like that. It's called the Rocket Cafe, which is no longer owned by a great guy named Rocco. That was easily the best job of my life. I got free food, you can't beat that. Especially since the food at the Rocket was excellent. During all that I was collaborating and performing and making appearences at talent shows and BOTBs. I was in a short lived outfit with Paula, best female vocals I've ever worked with called Crystal Palace. But Paula moved and we never got to record that album which I'm sure would have been the best thing since sliced cheese singles. So there's a line of failed bands, people I wasn't feeling or people who weren't feeling me. Whatever..... most musicians are egos and probably an even larger number of them are just straight up assholes.

So I said, fuck a band, I'm going solo. I can rely on me and I don't have to get pissed at me if I don't show up to practice. Plus I never miss a show without letting myself know. I finished a sampler in early 2000 called Anti-Logik which I discontinued because it sounded too amateur-ish. I gave a copy to Moby one time he passed through. I'm still waiting for his critique. So at the beginning of 2002 I decided I was ready to really record something. I had some money in the bank so I figured what the hell. In fact it wasn't a good time to try it, but I knew it would never be a good time and I think maybe part of it was triggered by my grand father's death. Life's too short to not to follow your ambition. So in two days I punched out eight of the tracks on the "1996" CD. The rest are just archived things I had wanted to use forever. I guess that brings me to the now. Which is where I run out of things to say. I guess just catch me at a show sometime. -Rob